Shortly, descriptive text is a part of factual genres in which it has social function to describe a particular person, place or thing. Besides, there are two
characteristics of that text. Those are Schematic Structure it is for identification, description, and Language Feature focus on specific participants, use of attribute
and identifying processes, frequent use of epithets and classifier in nominal groups, and use of simple present.
B. Reading
1. The General Concept of Reading
As one of English language skills, reading plays an important role in our daily life. It could be seen that we cannot separate ourselves from printed
materials. We read many fictions and non-fictions to get meaning and to get the information. There are some linguists who defined what reading is. In the
following is the definition given by Jeremy Harmer: Reading is working of eyes and brain, the eyes look the reading
and receive the message and then the message is transferred to the brain to work out the message. An exercise dominated by the eyes
and the brain. The eyes receive message and the brain then has to work out the significance of these messages.
25
Here, he pointed out that reading is a working of eyes and brain, the eyes look the reading and received the message and then the message is transferred to
the brain to work out the messages. In accordance with Jeremey Harmer‟s statement, Christine Nuttal in her
book “Teaching Reading Skill in A Foreign Language” also pointed out that
reading is a meaning, specifically with the transfer of meaning from mind to mind; the transfer of message from writer to reader.
26
Therefore, reading can be described as a meaning-getting process where the recognition of important
elements of the meaning in their essential relation transferring meaning from the printed written to the mind. In short, the two linguists above said that to get the
25
Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, New York: Longman, 1993, p.153.
26
Christine Nuttall, Teaching Reading Skills in a Foreign Language, Bangkok: Macmillan, 1996, pp. 2
—3.
meaning, the readers have to focus their eyes and brain to the printed material as they are reading.
Meanwhile, According to Richard Allington and Michael Strange reading is an active cognitive process that does indeed require using graphic letters and
phonic sounds information.
27
This is in line with what John F Savage and Jean F Mooney stated in their book that reading is a cognitive activity, an activity that
involves the use of higher mental process.
28
The cognitive process here means that the reader gets the knowledge from printed material. Cognitive process covers the
ability to retell the printed material and intelligence abilities such as implementing the principle or the concept, analyzing, understanding etc.
29
Some linguistics said that a cognitive process is the most important of reading act because the main goal
of reading is understanding. Generally, it can be concluded that reading as cognitive process is the
process when the reader gets the knowledge from printed material. Furthermore, reading is a complex cognitive process; where the reader comprehends the ideas
via medium of text. Reading is the process to understand, to get the knowledge, and to involve reader‟s mind.
However, in comprehending a printed language, it is quite difficult for the reader to accomplish multiple things simultaneously in constructing the meaning
from a text. Learning to read involves learning to deal with secondary language symbol system. Human invented language to represent or symbolize the objects,
experiences, ideas, emotions, etc.Here, Penny Ur explained that:
Our aims in real-life reading usually go beyond mere understanding. We may wish to understand something in order to
learn from it in a course of study, in order to find out how to act instructions, directions, in order to express an opinion about it a
letter requesting advice, or for many other purposes. Other pieces of writing, into which the writer has invested thought and care,
demand a personal response from the reader to the ideas in the text,
27
Richard Allington, and Michael Strange, Learning through Reading, Massachusetts: D.C Health, 1990, p.16.
28
John F Savage Jean F Mooney, Teaching Reading to Children with Special Needs, New York: Allyn and Bacon, 1999, p.22.
29
Suharsimi, Arikunto, Dasar-dasar Evaluasi Pendidikan, Jakarta: Bumi Aksara, 2007, pp. 117 —
119.
